No choice. No choice but to go.
Before Alyss followed Molly into the shop, she imagined the AD52s plugged up, useless, and could only hope her imagining had been successful, because she didn’t wait around to find out. She dived through the window into the shop.
As was perhaps appropriate for any shop specializing in the sale of puzzles and games, this one was itself built in the shape of a puzzle. Hand-crafted bookshelves were arranged to form a simple maze. Alyss and Homburg Molly ran up and down the narrow passages but found nothing. Every shelf was bare. They began toppling bookcases, opening every cabinet, trapdoor, and dummy window they came across.
“What are we looking for?” Molly yelled.
Alyss could barely hear her over the battle noise from outside. “I don’t know!” But then a bluish twinkle, a wink of colored light, caught her eye. She looked up and saw it: on the edge of the tallest bookcase in the shop, a glowing crystal cube.
“Up there!” “I’ll get it!”
Molly didn’t climb more than halfway up the bookcase before it tilted, started to fall. She jumped to the ground, scurrying out of harm’s way, but the crystal cube was in the air, falling hard and fast.
“Nooooo!” Alyss screamed.
The princess leaped, arms outstretched, as the bookcase crashed to the ground and splintered apart. But she’d caught it; the crystal cube was safe. Alyss turned it over in her hands, looking for a clue as to how
it worked. What am I supposed to-? Kabooooooorrrchk!
The shop door imploded and, still holding on to the radiant cube, Alyss fell back through a looking glass painted to appear like part of a wall. The fighting had spilled into the shop. But floating weightless inside the looking glass, Wonderland’s rightful princess saw the battle scene freeze, stopped in time. There was Dodge with his sword raised, attacking a Two Card. There was Hatter in midair, the saber blades of his belt open to fight three card soldiers at once (a pair of Fours and a Two). There were the generals, come to help Bibwit, who had somehow lost hold of his sword. And there was Homburg Molly, staring
wide-eyed at the spot where the princess had fallen through the looking glass. Alyss saw it all as if through a watery film, and despite the mortal threat she and the Alyssians were facing, despite the uncertainty of everything, she felt almost serene as she drifted down into the Looking Glass Maze.
CHAPTER 48
S HE LANDED gently on her feet in the middle of what appeared to be a prison-a looking glass prison. On every side of her were looking glasses as tall as forever, and no matter what direction she turned, she saw her reflection infinitely repeating into the mirrored distance.
“This is a maze?” she said aloud, but instead of hearing just her voice, she heard a chorus of voices, all of them hers.
Something was wrong-besides that she wasn’t in a maze. I must have found the wrong key but…Odd, that looks like me and yet it doesn’t. The reflection directly in front of Alyss was off somehow, inexact. She reached out toward the looking glass and-Ah!-the reflection grabbed her and pulled her into it.
“We have to hurry,” the reflection said. “Lots to do and many people to see. So little time.” “But…” Alyss couldn’t think what to say.
The reflection wouldn’t let go of her wrist and pulled her at a fast clip past looking glass halls that branched and snaked into the distance, past mirrored alcoves and dead ends. Even the floor was made of looking glass. Being led first one way and then another, Alyss felt sure her reflection was taking this complex route only to confuse her. Better not have to find my way back. Because there was no chance of that; Alyss had lost all sense of direction.
The reflection brought her to a stop in what appeared to be a rest area, a mirrored room wider than the corridors along which they’d passed. “Wait here,” the reflection said. “Someone will be with you shortly.”
“Don’t leave me!” But Alyss was already alone. Or was she? Her likeness looked back at her from every surface.
“Hello?” she said, and again a chorus of voices said it with her-the voices of her reflections. She lifted her hand toward the one closest to her, to take hold of it, but her fingers couldn’t penetrate the looking
glass and stubbed themselves against its cold quicksilver surface.
Maybe I was supposed to follow her? But Alyss could no longer be sure in which direction the reflection had gone. Imagine a way out. That must be what I’m supposed to do. It’s a test. Alyss gathered herself tight for the effort her imaginings required, but between the flicker of her eyelids she saw someone approaching from the distance of a looking glass. Closer and closer the person came, and even before Alyss could make out the woman’s face, she recognized the clothes.
“Mother!” she and her reflections gasped.
Genevieve was dressed as her daughter had last seen her but without the crown. She came right up to the other side of the looking glass.
“Alyss,” Genevieve said, and the wistful, proud smile that formed on the dead queen’s face caused tears to well up in her daughter’s eyes.
“She’s become as beautiful as I imagined,” said a man’s voice.
Alyss turned to see her father, Nolan, beaming at her from one of the looking glasses in place of her reflection.
“Dad!” she said, running to embrace him, wanting to feel the touch of her long-gone father. I don’t care about any maze or about Redd or the Heart Crystal! I want us all to be together again! I want my family back! I WANT MY FAMILY BACK! But Alyss couldn’t pass through the looking glass. “What is this?” she cried. “Where are you?”
“We’re in you, dear,” Nolan said.
Genevieve gave a little sigh. “If we are successful against Redd, no one can say that our success has been without sacrifice. But I sometimes wonder if it has required too much of us.”
“Of all involved who fight for White Imagination,” said Nolan.
“Yes, of course,” said Genevieve. “The path to a victory of this magnitude is doomed to be littered with defeats and failures.”
With a soft look of sympathy, Nolan walked from one looking glass to another to stand next to his wife. He put his arm around her and kissed her on the forehead, which seemed to raise her spirits.
“Alyss,” Genevieve said, “it is good that you have taken it upon yourself to exercise your imagination. You are well on your way to reaching your potential of imaginative power and control. But all you have experienced and discovered about yourself is not enough. Not yet.”
“Look at her.” Nolan chuckled. “She’s an adult. She doesn’t need her parents nagging her. Alyss, my sweet, have half as much faith in yourself as others have in you and you’ll be fine.”
The royal couple turned and began walking off into the distance of the looking glass. “Wait!” Alyss shouted. “Don’t go!”
But Genevieve and Nolan kept walking. “Wa-ait! Will I ever see you again?”
They stopped, apparently surprised by the question.
“Again and again and again,” said Nolan.
“If you know where to look for us,” said Genevieve.
Then they were gone and Alyss’ reflection once again occupied the glass.
All strength left the princess. She fell to her knees and buried her face in her hands. She would never get over the sudden, violent loss of her parents, never be able to accept the absence their deaths had left behind. How can I? How could anyone? Her sobs were magnified tenfold as her reflections cried with her.